Report: 2011 Temkin Loyalty Ratings

The report identifies the level of loyalty that US consumers have for 143 organizations across 12 industries.

Here’s the executive summary:

Amazon.com, Kohl’s, and Costco took the top spots in the 2011 Temkin Loyalty Ratings. We asked 6,000 US consumers to rate their level of loyalty to companies across three components: purchasing additional products and services, reluctance to switch business away, and likelihood to recommend the company to friends and relatives. This data allowed us to rate 143 companies across 12 industries. Only 17% of those companies received a “strong” or “very strong” loyalty rating. The results show that retailers have the highest level of loyalty while TV service providers and health plans have the lowest.

Download report for $195

First of all, let me give a shoutout to the five companies with the highest ratings, indicating that they have the most loyal customers:

1. Amazon.com

2. Kohl’s

3. Costco

4. (tie) Lowe’s

4. (tie) Sam’s Club

Here’s a list of the top 20 companies in the ratings. Click on the graphic below or click right here if you want to see the results for all 143 companies.

The Temkin Loyalty Ratings are calculated by examining three levels of loyalty that companies have earned from consumers: willingness to buy more products, reluctance to switch business away from, and likelihood to recommend those companies.

Overall, consumers don’t have a strong degree of loyalty across many industries. Retailers, by far, earn the highest levels of loyalty. TV Service providers and Internet Service providers, on the other hand, have earned woefully little loyalty with consumers.

Here are some of the other findings from the research:

Results versus industry averages. Led by USAA (insurance and credit cards), TriCare (health plans), credit unions (banks), and Southwest Airlines, 12 companies had double-digit advantages in loyalty over their industry. At the other end of the spectrum, Radio Shack (retailers), Super 8 (hotel chains), and Gap (retailers) led 18 companies with loyalty scores at least 10 points below their industry averages.

“Recommending” leaders and laggards. Led by Costco and Amazon.com, 36 companies have “very strong” ratings for consumers that are likely to recommend them to friends and colleagues. At the other end of the spectrum, Charter Communications, Anthem, and Comcast are the only firms with a “very weak” rating in this area.

“Switching” leaders and laggards. While no companies have very strong ratings for customers that are reluctant to switch, TriCare and USAA lead the five companies that have a “strong” rating in this area. Blue Shield Of California and Lenovo are at the low-end of the spectrum along with 12 other companies that have negative ratings in this area.

“Repurchasing” leaders and laggards. When it comes to having customers who are likely to purchase something else from them, Amazon.com and Old Navy lead 21 companies with “very strong” loyalty ratings in this area. HSBC and Charter Communications are two of the seven companies that didn’t even cross the 20% mark in this area.

Now that we’ve published the Temkin Loyalty Ratings and the Temkin Experience Ratings, we’re analyzing the correlation between the two datasets. Look for out upcoming report: Customer Experience And Loyalty: Connecting The Dots

About Bruce Temkin, CCXPI am a customer experience transformist, helping large organizations improve business results by changing how they deal with customers. As part of this focus, I examine strategy, marketing, interaction design, customer service, and leadership practices. I am also a fanatical student of business, so this blog provides an outlet for sharing insights from my ongoing educational journey.
Simply put, I am passionate about spotting emerging best practices and helping companies master them. And, as many people know, I love to speak about these topics in almost any forum.
My “title” is Managing Partner of the Temkin Group, a customer experience research and consulting firm that helps organizations become more customer-centric. Our goal is simple: accelerate the path to delighting customers.
I am also the co-founder and chair of the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA.org), a non-profit organization dedicated to the success of CX professionals.

Great work as always! I’m very interested in your approach because it includes repurchase and switching in addition to willingness to recommend.

But how does this relate to manufacturers? Are they not listed because they don’t achieve loyalty or because they aren’t necessairy good at creating loyalty? Working at a company who manufactures but sells through a trade network has made it a bit more difficult to determine and define the economics of loyalty but I’m still a believer that this is the future of our brands!

Hi Kathleen: Thanks for the feedback. To some degree, it’s a bit harder to evaluate the experience of manufacturers because they don’t have as many (non product) touchpoints as other companies that we’ve evaluated. But we are considering adding appliance manufacturers to our next round of ratings (Experience, Loyalty, etc.). If so, Whirlpool will definitely be included.

Reliability is ultimately becoming the functional equivalent of popularity where loyalty is concerned, as it has been for most consumers for years and years. In global markets, it becomes the essential anchor for those seeking performance, innovation as the other signal for potential progress, rather than stagnation found so often in retailer and even wholesaler schemes of profit making and profit taking.

Bruce – Great work, as always from you and your group. For some time now you have been putting a spotlight on Customer Experience and its association to driving Customer loyalty. Of course the folks who read your work “get it”. But wondering if you can quantify a trend over the past, say 3 years, of those industries that seem to be “getting it” and improving (and highlight the companies leading that charge in those industries) versus those that still seem to be stuck on “lip service”. It seems that every company talks a good game about how important their customers are and how they are central to their business. Yet, it still seems a minority are willing to put the strategic importance, organizational effort, and yes dollars, where their mouth is.